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PB GROUP: SEVERAL SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS SUPPORT PUBLIC OPTION

By Amy Widner/OF THE COMMERCIAL STAFF
Friday, November 6, 2009 2:19 AM CST

Several small business owners support health care reform and the inclusion of a public option — that was the message a Pine Bluff group took to lawmakers in Washington, D.C., this week.

Linda Brown went on the trip, which was paid for by the pro-health care reform organization Main Street Alliance. She owns Vision Plus International, a training and consulting business based in White Hall. She helps train small businesses and nonprofits in skills such as bookkeeping and grant writing.

While Brown has had employees in the past, she is now the only employee.

“I can’t afford to hire more, and [health care costs] are one of the reasons,” Brown said. “I have had more in the past that left because they were looking for benefits that I couldn’t offer, and I don’t blame them.”

Brown herself is uninsured because she has a pre-existing condition. She used her personal and professional struggles with health care to talk to Sen. Blanche Lincoln and Rep. Mike Ross during her trip Monday and Tuesday. She was joined by three other Arkansas business owners: Two from Pine Bluff and one from Little Rock.

“It’s critical for us to get those good employees that will work hard, but they will go with the company that can give them those good benefits, and that’s usually a larger company,” Brown said. “It’s not that small businesses don’t want to provide insurance for their employees, it’s that it’s so expensive that they can’t. And right now, we have no bargaining power.”

The Arkansas group joined 130 small business owners from across the nation, according to Pine Bluff Main Street Alliance organizer Demetrius Melvin. The Pine Bluff office is at 104 S. Main St., Suite F.

Melvin said the alliance tries to find out what small business owners think and help them communicate their point of view to lawmakers.

The alliance also conducts surveys, the most recent of which was released Thursday.

According to a press release, 472 small business owners in Arkansas, Indiana, Nebraska and North Carolina were surveyed Oct. 12-31. In Arkansas, 67 percent of respondents supported giving small businesses a choice between a range of private plans and a public option; and 63 percent said they were willing to contribute to employee health care.

The survey and trip came as the House is expected to vote Saturday on the HR 3962 version of the health care bill.

This is the second Mainstreet Alliance-organized trip to Washington. Two Pine Bluff small business owners made the trip in September. The Rev. Leroy Hampton, who owns High Point Auto Sales and also sells men’s and women’s fashion at the store, went on the September trip.

He and his wife are the only current employees. They are both uninsured and had a bad experience with their former insurance company after his wife underwent surgery for a brain tumor.

“After the surgery we found out that we didn’t have enough insurance to cover even a quarter of the costs,” Hampton said. “The way things are right now, you can have insurance, but there’s no one to enforce your insurance, no way to make them pay.”

Hampton said he spoke with Lincoln in September and again when she held her town hall meeting in Pine Bluff.

“I told her America is sick, America is dying,” Hampton said. “Everyday people are not getting the health care they need because they can’t afford it. When it comes to buying health care or feeding your family, you’re going to feed your family first, and that’s how people end up going untreated for so long.”

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